


Le Précepteur

by heatingpad



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Biracial Lance (Voltron), Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Bisexual Male Character, Cuban Lance (Voltron), Korean Keith (Voltron), Lance (Voltron) Has ADHD, Languages and Linguistics, M/M, Minor Matt Holt/Shiro, Slow Burn, Tutoring, Will update tags, like...very slow im sorry, slight angst but there will be a happy ending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-02 00:58:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8645071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heatingpad/pseuds/heatingpad
Summary: (title translation: the private tutor)Canadian high school au??Lance needs a French tutor so he starts asking all the kids in the native level French class to help. They all say no, until Keith doesn't.





	1. mon petit ami

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted a foreign language acquisition fic so I decided to have Keith teach Lance French because then I don't make a fool of myself with bad translations...yeah. I will update tags as I write more

Keith doesn’t remember the day that he moved to Canada, but he does remember when Lance first arrived. This is probably because Keith was a baby and Lance was a junior in high school when their respective moves occurred. Having grown up in the Shirogane household in Montréal, Keith was fluent in French and familiar with Japanese but, despite having been born in Incheon, he knew hardly any Korean.

If anyone, Lance McClain could relate to Keith’s inability to speak the language of his mother country. Lance was a third culture kid if Keith had ever seen one; he was born in Cuba to an Irish American father and a Cuban mother and grew up between Doha, Bangkok, Bali, Abu Dhabi, Houston, and Beijing thanks to his dad’s job. Every time he moved house, he would change his second language course to suit the language spoken in the country where he was staying. Thus, the longest he ever studied one language was six years of Arabic between his four years in Doha and two in Abu Dhabi. His Spanish was limited to common phrases and words his mom used around the household.

When Lance moved to Keith’s school, he enrolled in the ab initio French class with an optimistic outlook on learning the language. Two trimesters into the school year, however, Lance found himself struggling enough to seek out a tutor. Since he went to a school full of native French speakers, he didn’t think finding one was going to be as difficult as it was, but it seemed that almost everybody had no time for him. Eventually, though, he just started approaching random people in his classes who he knew took A-level French. This meant that it wasn’t long before Lance approached Keith.

Since both dreamt of careers involving astrophysics, the two shared their economics, physics, and higher-level math classes. Although sharing more than two classes with someone was uncommon at their school, Keith and Lance hardly talked to each other since they didn’t run in the same social circles. Not that Keith ignored Lance on purpose, but the cliques at their school were subconsciously determined by how well one spoke French. Plus, Keith was about eighty percent sure that Lance hated him for some reason.

This is why Keith was surprised when Lance approached him one day after their last period math class. Simply put, they never had any interaction besides Lance eagerly seeking out and correcting any errors Keith made when the teacher called on him. After the surprise wore off, however, he was delighted that Lance asked for his help.

“Hey Keith,” Lance said casually, standing in between Keith and the door.

“Hi,” Keith replied tentatively, looking over Lance’s shoulder at his retreating friends. He would have to catch up with them at the lockers because it appeared that Lance was not going to move for a while.

“I need your help with something,” Lance began, “and it’s okay if you say no, I mean, so has everyone that I’ve asked before you, which is why I’m asking you this now, but I don’t expect you to say yes, so don’t feel pressured to, but—”

“Lance,” Keith interrupted, “could you get on with it?”

“Uh, I need a French tutor. Pretty badly.”

“You _what_?” asked Keith before he could stop the words coming out of his mouth. He never thought Lance would admit inferiority to Keith, even when it comes to speaking French where Keith is objectively a lot better.

“It’s fine, like I said, you don’t have to,” Lance’s shoulders fell as he retreated his request, “but I can pay you if you want.”

“D’ac, je t’aiderai,” Keith replied condescendingly, knowing Lance wouldn’t understand him. As he expected, Lance was still looking at him with those glossy, inquisitive (and slightly disappointed) eyes. Laughing, Keith elaborated, “that means I’ll do it.”

Being characteristically expressive, Lance’s face lit up when he realized he had gotten his way. “Great,” he said as he retreated backwards into the hallway, “I’ll text you!”

As Lance spun around and walked away, Keith whispered to himself, “You don’t have my number.”

…

[ **iMessage  
Today** 16:25]

Lance: hey pidgerino!! <3

Pidge: i thought we agreed that we weren’t going to call me that.

Lance: I need a favorrr please

Pidge: what.

Lance: you know that guy keith in my phys class  
Lance: who I always complain about because he repeats my answers in class but louder and then the teacher acknowledges him but not me

Pidge: yeah, why?

Lance: any chance you have his number?

Pidge: yeah actually  
Pidge: one second…  
Pidge: why do you ask? what are you up to

Lance: he agreed to tutor me in french!! unlike some mean people

Pidge: ok first of all im in french b standard i could not have helped a whole lot i barely know any more french than you  
Pidge: second of all his number is 514-230-xxxx have fun

Lance: thank youuuu <3<3  
(Read 16:49)

 

[ **iMessage  
Today** 16:51]

Lance: bonjour mon petit ami!! ca va

Keith: uh who is this

Lance: it is i, lance mcdreamy

Keith: oh. So you really do need help in French huh

Lance: yes why do you ask?

Keith: what did you think that first bit of your first text meant

Lance: hello my short friend?

Keith: yeah no  
Keith: we’ll work on it.

Lance: what does it mean then??  
Lance: keith???  
(Read 17:36)

…

The next day, when Lance walked into economics class, he shot Keith a grin. Keith was taken aback by this display of recognition since Lance normally didn’t acknowledge him at all. He flashed back a weak smile and took his usual seat by the window across the room from Lance. Keith took out his notebook and proceeded to not pay attention to the lecture that their teacher had prepared. He had read the chapter in the book beforehand since he found her explanations so convoluted and confusing that it was less productive to pay attention in class than to rest his mind for a bit.

In his boredom, Keith looked across the room by the door. He wondered to himself why Lance always seems to sit by the door in every class that they share. In the middle of his wondering, before he could realize he had been staring too long, Lance caught his eye and grinned at him again. Keith grimaced internally, cursing himself out of embarrassment. Externally, however, he smiled back a bit more enthusiastically than he had at the beginning of class and his smile widened even further when he saw how excited Lance became in response to his reaction. Soon after, Lance turned back towards the board to sketch a couple graphs that their teacher had put on the board. Keith went back to being bored on his own.

When class was over, Keith packed his bag and headed towards the door with a couple of his friends. When he neared Lance’s desk, he started asking himself if he should say hi or just walk past. He wasn’t exactly sure where the two of them stood, given that he thought that he seriously annoyed Lance until just now when they smiled back and forth. Were they friends? Keith wasn’t quite sure what was socially appropriate to do.

Before Keith could spend too much time overanalyzing the social implications of his actions, Lance swooped to the rescue and started a conversation with him. _So_ , Keith thought, _I think we_ are _friends now_.

“Keith! Hey,” Lance began, putting his hand on Keith’s shoulder. “I was wondering if you were free to tutor me sometime this week? I have a vocabulary quiz on Monday and I’m suffering.”

“What’s it on?”

“Adjectives and familial vocabulary. That’s how I know the words ‘petit’ and ‘ami,’ but last night you said I didn’t even know what those meant and they’re basically the only ones I know so I’m really screwed.”

“Yeah,” said Keith, finding Lance’s train of thought a bit hard to follow, “maybe text me what day and time works for you? You have my number, right?”

“Yep.”

“How'd you get that, by the way?” asked Keith. He had meant to slip that question into conversation since he had no clue what mutual friends the two of them had. Lance was pretty social, but only Keith’s close friends or family members knew his phone number and he didn’t think Lance would talk to any of them regularly.

“Oh,” Lance replied, “I just asked around. My friend Pidge happened to have it. You know her, right? She’s a freshman.”

Keith nodded. He knew her through their brothers who had been dating for a couple of years. It seemed weird to him that he was connected to Lance in a simple way that he didn’t even know about. He and Lance both said “see you later” and parted ways. Keith had _It’s a Small World_ stuck in his head for the rest of the day.

While waiting for the bus in his usual spot, Keith spotted Lance messing around across the courtyard with another boy who Keith vaguely recognized. Keith had never seen Lance after school before, so he blinked hard, but then he figured that Lance probably stayed after quite often and Keith just never noticed until now. He watched Pidge approach Lance and joke around, watched Lance’s expression light up upon seeing his friend and the laughter that ensued. For a few minutes, Keith indulged himself and allowed himself to watch Lance and his friends have fun. Right when Keith was about to work up the courage to approach the trio, his bus pulled up and he wordlessly got on. Lance and his friends never even noticed Keith enviously watching their banter.

…

[ **iMessage  
Today** 15:37]

Keith: hey Lance would Friday work for you? I have basketball most weekdays in the afternoon except when there’s morning practice

Lance: yeah yeah what time?  
Lance: i really dont care when as long as it ends up happening !!  
Lance: you call the shots dw

Keith: if you want you can just take my bus home with me

Lance: ok do i need to get a ride home after?

Keith: if that’s a problem my dad can give you one or you could stay the night  
Keith: since it’s a Friday anyway

…

Keith didn’t know why asking Lance to sleep over made him a bit nervous. He chalked it down to the fact that he hadn’t had a sleepover since middle school and he didn’t know if people even did that anymore. When he looked back at his phone, it had been almost ten minutes since he had texted Lance the offer with no response. Oh God, thought Keith, he probably thinks I’m weird. Keith leaped a little bit when he heard his phone buzz.

…

Lance: sounds fun! my mom says yes so we’re good to go  
Lance: how much do you want me to pay you?

Keith: don’t worry it’s no charge

Lance: awesome!!!! see you tomorrow then keith

Keith: yeah see you tomorrow  
Delivered  
…

Keith breathed a sigh of relief. Lance didn’t think he was weird. And Lance was being friendly. Were they friends now? Keith noted that he had asked himself that exact question earlier that very day. He supposed that they were, looking back on the smiles they had exchanged in economics and the amiable texts Lance had sent him. The one thing that confused Keith, however, the thing that made him question whether or not he and Lance were friends, was the fact that Lance had always been so eager to one-up him. He thought back to the times in physics class when he answered a question and Lance almost got up and yelled, “stop stealing my answers and saying them louder so you get credit for answering! Can you even think of anything more annoying a person could do?”

After that day, Keith had kept his distance from Lance because he figured that Lance hated him. He had no clue what he had been talking about, Keith had never heard Lance answer the question before him, but he decided it wasn’t worth bothering himself about someone he barely knew. Now, though, Lance seemed so open and so amicable that Keith was very confused. Was this change in attitude only because he now wanted something out of Keith?

Not long after entertaining that thought, Keith decided it was time to go to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to have the first tutoring session in this chapter but it was getting long so it will have to wait sorry
> 
> translations:  
> "D’ac, je t’aiderai": Ok, I'll help you
> 
> "Bonjour mon petit ami": Hello my boyfriend (that's the direct translation but nobody talks like that I basically made Lance butcher the language with that sentence)


	2. ceux qui attendent des choses perdent des choses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic is kind of a combination of 3rd person limited and omniscient so im sorry if you thought it was gonna be keith's pov the whole time
> 
> today is the day of my homecoming dance yet i spent all day finishing this instead of getting ready lol
> 
> also the chapter title is really random i couldnt think of a better one ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Lance left the school natatorium after swim practice on Friday morning and went about his normal routine in the locker room, washing his hair with chlorine removal shampoo and shaving hastily. Chatting idly with his teammates, he tugged his jeans on his wet legs (with difficulty) and looked in the mirror as he put on deodorant. Making eye contact with his reflection, he noted the dark circles that had cropped up beneath his eyes. It seemed that he began every week chipper and optimistic but by Friday he was so tired that he had to sleep the entire weekend to prevent himself from dropping out of high school.

He tugged on his shirt when his hair was dry enough and took out an orange bottle full of off-white pills, popped one in his mouth, swallowed it dry, and put the bottle back in his bag. Giving himself one last once-over in the mirror, he left the locker room just after the ten-minute bell rang. _Shit_ , he thought to himself, _I forgot my bag in my locker but my first class today is physics_. Knowing he had no time to cross campus twice, he decided to make one of his friends bring it for him.

…

[ **iMessage  
Today** 7:47]

Lance: podge!!!! you love me right 

Pidge: yes?

Lance: are you coming to the science building first period?

Pidge: no i have history

Lance: crap nevermind  
(Read 7:50)

…

At that point, the five-minute bell rang and Lance knew he was done for. The physics lab was right there by the natatorium but his bag was all the way across campus. _Fuck it_ , he thought to himself as he walked towards his class empty-handed. Maybe his substitute would let him go back to his locker and get it if he explained himself.

He walked into class with two minutes until the bell was due to ring. He had gone back to his locker a couple times to pick up his bag back when his teacher was there, but he had fallen ill. Now his daughter, Allura, was fresh out of university and their long-term physics substitute. Not only was she remarkably gorgeous, she was knowledgeable both when it came to physics and real world situations. Lance would be lying if he said he hadn’t tried to flirt with her before, and he would be lying if he said he still wasn’t trying to impress her daily. It kept him motivated to try hard in physics, which was a good thing since he had quite an aptitude for the subject.

“Good morning, Ms. Alfor,” Lance began as he entered the classroom, “sorry about this, but I left my backpack by my locker before swim practice. Could I go grab it right now?”

She sighed. “Go ahead, but hurry.” Other students started filing into the classroom as Lance bolted out; he smiled at Keith as he passed by and, still smiling, winked benignly at Hunk. He was never one to be afraid of showing affection to his friends. Before he could see their reactions, he was off running to his locker across campus.

When he got back to class, backpack in tow, everyone was going over the homework. Hunk had saved Lance a chair next to him, bless his soul. Walking towards his seat, Lance smiled apologetically at their substitute and pulled his homework out of his bag.

“Does anybody know the answer to number four?” she prompted, and a few people raised their hands, Keith among them. She ended up choosing Keith to read off his answer.

“The wavelength is 5.33x10-7 meters,” Keith called out confidently. When Lance looked at his sheet to check if their answers matched, he noticed that Keith had made a dumb mistake that Lance had caught himself about to make the night before. A triumphant grin split his face open as he thrust his hand in the air. Today, he finally had another chance to display his aptitude for science.

“Yes, Lance?” 

“Actually,” said Lance, “since the question asks for the wavelength in nanometers, the answer is 533 nanometers.”

“Good observation, Lance,” Allura said, and although she didn’t seem very enthusiastic about praising him, Lance shot her a grin.

Lance couldn’t deny that he felt proud of himself. Not only did he actually pay enough attention to his homework last night to catch a detail like that, but he had done a better job of it than Keith who didn’t even have ADHD. He allowed himself time to entertain the warm smugness spreading through his chest and making his sternum feel heavy before he smiled at Keith to make sure they were still on good terms. He saw Keith’s eyebrows knit together and realized that he was on the receiving end of a death glare. He felt his mind start to replay the past couple minutes on repeat, starting when Ms. Alfor called on Keith and ending with Keith’s glower. He found himself analyzing way too deeply how mad Keith probably was, and before he could catch himself, Lance had missed the answers for the rest of the worksheet. _Oh no_ , Lance thought to himself, _not this, please not this. I really need to pay attention to class right now, and not this_.

His mind didn’t care what he wanted to pay attention to, however. It never really did. He tried for the next couple of minutes to read the lesson notes on the board and write them down, but his head felt too weightless to comprehend all the text on the board. In an attempt to refocus, he read the lesson's topic sentence over again. He knew he had understood it when he read it a couple of minutes ago, but now the meaning was lost to him. It was just a series of letters; their significance and coherence was gone. Lance dragged his eyes over the words again and again, almost begging himself to process them, until his forehead felt physically uncomfortable. He reached his left hand up to his jaw and started absently rubbing his clean-shaven face. He stared at the board and tried to read the text but it felt like he was looking past it rather than at it, no matter how hard he tried to force both his eyes to look at the same thing.

Lance’s wandering hand started playing with his bottom lip as he ran his thumb over the smooth skin of his cheek. His attention kept shifting back and forth from the sensation this action produced on his hand and the sensation it produced on the skin of his face. He started thinking about how weird it is that he is feeling his face with his hand and feeling his hand with his face. Soon after noting this observation, he looked over at the back of Keith’s head again.

And suddenly Lance wasn’t focusing on the feeling in his face anymore. He began replaying the scene from earlier in his head again, reliving the decision to publicly correct Keith and cringing about it on repeat. Lance started to click his mechanical pencil as his mind began to fill with embarrassment and questions.

_Was I too rude? Did I strike a nerve? Is Keith touchy about his intellect? How smart is he, anyway? How do you even measure intelligence in an unbiased way? How can a human do anything in an unbiased way? What does it mean to be a human being in the first place? Does Keith ever wonder about the human condition when he should be focusing?_

Lance closed his eyes and threw his head back. He found that his right hand was clicking his mechanical pencil rapidly even though he didn’t even remember when he started doing that. He pinched in between his eyebrows until it hurt and tried to hone in on Allura’s voice teaching the lesson. Allura, Ms. Alfor, her lesson. That was all he needed to think about right now. He felt a sort of density seeping back to his brain. _Oh my God, it’s actually happening this time_ , Lance thought to himself. He could essentially feel the concentration coming back into his mind. He was so excited to actually pay attention to the lesson that his heartbeat picked up speed.

Allura’s voice suddenly began to make sense. The words she used began to have meaning to him and relate to each other. Lance was overjoyed. He heard her voice penetrate his foggy thoughts and grabbed onto the words that were suddenly grasping his attention, “…since it is measurable in coulombs per second.”

Fuck, Lance had missed the beginning of her sentence. Now he couldn’t focus on what she was saying because it didn’t mean anything to him. The lead fell out of the pencil that he was still clicking and rolled from his desk onto the floor.

After class, he waited for Hunk to pack his bag so they could go over to the social science classrooms together. Lance had packed his bag about ten minutes prior since he had given up all hope of focusing for that class.

Lance suspected that Hunk had noticed his loss of attention in class, but he also knew that if he did he would bring it up gently. Although Hunk couldn’t relate to Lance’s disorder, he was extremely empathetic about it and knew how to talk about it since they had been friends forever. Lance thanked the universe for giving him a friend like Hunk.

“You need to borrow my notes over the weekend?” Hunk offered with no precedent.

“Yes, thank you so much,” Lance replied gratefully and paused before adding, “I even remembered to take my damn Ritalin and that lecture was worse than it has been sometimes when I haven’t taken it.”

“Yeah, usually you notice that you’re clicking your pencil before the lead falls out.”

The left side of Lance’s mouth quirked up into an appreciative smile as an acknowledgement of Hunk’s understanding. He leaned his weight onto his right foot so that he could bump Hunk’s shoulder with his own and scrunched up his nose when Hunk smiled down at him. Lance had conveniently forgotten that he had pissed off Keith until he pushed past them, walking out the door briskly and alone.

…

[ **iMessage  
Today** 8:49]

Lance: heykeith no hard feelings right  
Lance: ?  
Delivered

…

Lance frowned at his phone. He knew not everyone checked their phones during their six-minute hallway time because that was barely enough time to cross campus, but Lance hoped that Keith wouldn’t ignore him for the rest of the day. First of all, he really needed his help with French because that class was kicking his ass, and second of all, he didn’t want to be on bad terms with Keith in the slightest. They had their next class together, so Lance figured he would find out how badly he had screwed up in due time.

Like always, the two boys sat on opposite sides of their economics class. Lance felt more focused than he had been in physics, having managed to write down notes about the lesson and draw out a couple graphs, but his heart wasn’t in it. His mind kept wandering to his French tutor sitting a few desks away. His attempts to make eye contact were unsuccessful for the most part and he noticed that Keith was actually listening to the lesson. He still had that look on his face, his eyebrows pushed together so his forehead looked a bit like that of a pug’s. _He can’t be that mad at me_ , thought Lance, _can he_?

Lance waited for Keith to walk towards the door after class. He was uncertain of himself but he was dying to know where he stood with Keith. Trying to mask his nerves, he asked, “Hey, I’m still going home with you after school, yeah? I packed an overnight bag.”

When people spoke to him, Keith tended to look at their mouths. He found that eyes could reflect glints of light in manners that will alter someone’s meaning depending on the chiaroscuro of a room. A reflection of sunlight off a cornea could portray a cheeky glint that didn’t really exist; he was acutely aware of how one can misjudge an eye from its reaction to a beam of light. He couldn’t seem to read people’s eyes because he could never be sure of what they were revealing. Lips, on the other hand, he could read. He perceived how their corners revealed smugness or diffidence or any other possible emotion. Mouths were a lot more dependable. The bottom line is that although Lance’s eyes glinted confidently, his mouth was bent slightly downward, a subtle gesture portraying obvious uncertainty.

“Yeah, of course,” Keith said gently. Lance paused, thinking, _What_?

“So, you’re not mad at me, or anything?” Lance asked, more than a little bit confused.

“Don’t have any reason to be,” Keith replied, “see you in math.”

 _Maybe his face just always looks a little pissed off_ , Lance told himself.

And Keith was off. Lance presumed he was going to music since Lance’s free period was during the arts classes. Lance went to the library, took out his and Hunk’s physics notebooks, and began copying the notes. He flipped through the textbook a couple times for clarification but he found himself understanding the lesson. Finally.

The rest of the school day went by quickly, Lance trying his best to keep up with the discussion in French, taking notes throughout chemistry and English, and finishing his math quiz without using his extra time. When he walked to the courtyard, he said a quick hello to Hunk and Pidge before he craned his neck to look for Keith. He found him sitting alone on a bench with a plaque on the arm reading “Gifted by the class of 2009.” Lance plopped down by him and greeted him cheerfully.

“H-,” Keith croaked in response, sounding like he had something caught in his throat. He coughed into his elbow and tried again. “Hey.”

Since he just came from a math quiz, Lance had math on the brain. Their class had been studying probability and Lance wasn’t sure how he felt about it. On one hand, he thought it was really cool on a conceptual level, but on the other hand he had trouble applying it to word problems and such. It was not his best unit. Since his answers to the quiz were still fresh on his mind, he asked Keith, “What did you get on the first problem on the back? The one where (k-1)! equals k!/2?”

“I forgot how to solve it so I just wrote ‘no solution,’” Keith admitted, “and hoped that I would at least get partial credit.”

That answer made Lance laugh. “Oh my God, Keith, you’re screwed! That was a four-point problem, you needed to show work!”

“I know,” Keith replied, tone of voice surprisingly still lighthearted, “so why don’t we talk about something else so I don’t have to think about my impending quiz grade?”

“Alright,” Lance mused, “sounds good.” He paused for a moment to think of a good conversation topic, his face lighting up when one came to him. “So what do you think of our physics sub?”

“She’s alright, I guess,” responded Keith noncommittally. He didn’t seem very interested to Lance.

“I mean, I feel bad for Dr. Alfor for getting sick and everything, but I really don’t mind her being my teacher. She’s radiant. I just…she’s gorgeous.”

“Sure is,” Keith said, and pointed to his bus as it rolled up to the pair. “Ride’s here.” Lance and Keith were picking up their bags and walking toward the bus when Lance felt his phone buzz in his back pocket.

[ **iMessage  
Today** 15:53]

Hunk: you’re going home with keith today? didn’t know you guys were friends

Lance: yeah hes gna help me with french because i suck ass

Hunk: oh cool. you still coming to dinner tomorrow night with my moms?

Lance: wouldn’t miss it for the world (:

Hunk: okay good. have fun  
Delivered

Keith and Lance chatted on the bus ride to Keith’s house about relatively safe topics, school and schoolwork and extended essay topics and the like. Keith told Lance that if he was taking psychology he would probably write his about chemically induced insanity. Lance made a comment about how that sounded like his chemistry class, which earned a laughing fit from Keith.

Lance felt very proud that he made the stoic boy lose it with laughter. He decided he wanted to see if he could do it again.

The rest of the night was going to be fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i cut off the chapter before the tutoring scene _again_ why am i like this lol
> 
> important to note:  
> 1\. I do not have ADHD so if I misrepresent it please let me know (although hopefully you won't have to because I am trying not to represent it in a stereorypical or inaccurate light).  
> 2\. I will not be updating this fic regularly bc like keith and lance in this fic i am an ib student and i have no free time so i will only be updating every 6 weeks or so when i get a break from school (this is the exception bc i wrote most of this chapter before school started back up from thanksgiving break)
> 
> also if you have read this far ily!!


	3. la littérature

When the boys finally arrived at Keith’s bus stop, they rushed inside his house to escape the cold. Neither of his foster parents were home from work yet, which they discovered when nobody responded to Keith calling “hello.” Once they peeled off their thick jackets and boots, Lance followed Keith up the carpeted stairs into his room.

Keith’s room was more clean than Lance had expected. Sure, his bed was unmade and he had socks on the floor, but his bookshelves were organized according to the height of his books and most of his floor was visible which was a bit alien to Lance. Not that Lance often left messes on his bedroom floor, he just had so much stuff that it generally occupied most of his available space. Keith really knew how to make a small room look spacious and that was surprisingly refreshing to Lance.

As soon as he got a few steps in, Lance sat down on the floor and leaned his back against the foot of Keith’s twin size bed, all the while unzipping his backpack and pulling out his books for homework.

“Whoa, we’re going to start working already?” asked Keith in an almost disbelieving tone, “you know we have the whole night to get to work.”

“I know,” said Lance, “but if I start doing other things it will be harder for me to start doing, like, busywork later. It’s better for me to do it now when I’m in the mindset, you know?”

“Yeah, I guess I get it,” Keith responded, settling down at his desk. “Do you want to start with French or other stuff?”

“Other stuff, please,” Lance said, stressing the “please” melodramatically. “I don’t know if I’m ready for you to see how bad I am at French yet.

Keith chose not to point out that he had already seen that from the very limited exchange the two had had in French. _It’s better not to go out of my way to wound Lance’s ego_ , he thought, _since it’s so easy to do by accident_.

“Okay, let’s start with math so that if we don’t understand something we can help each other,” Keith suggested.

“Perfect,” replied Lance.

A couple moments passed before Lance said Keith’s name to get his attention.

“What’s up?” came Keith’s nonchalant reply.

“I think I forgot my math book in my locker since we didn’t need it in class.”

“That’s okay, you can share with me,” Keith offered, “and it’s probably a good thing that you’re over at my house otherwise you would be toast.”

Lance had already gotten up from the floor and began walking over to Keith’s desk, chuckling a little under his breath. “Toast?” he teased.

“Yeah, like, you’d be in an unfavorable situation,” explained Keith.

“No, I knew what you meant,” Lance clarified, “I was just teasing you for talking like an uncle.”

“What does that even mean?” Keith asked, more defensively than he would have hoped to sound.

Lance arrived at Keith’s desk from his trek across the room and stood over him. “It means nobody from our generation still talks like that.”

Keith turned his head towards Lance. “I still don’t get why that makes me an uncle.”

“I don’t know,” Lance mused, “it just fits.”

Conversation continued to flow easily as they lightheartedly squabbled with one another. Lance found himself a chair and sat down next to Keith, both of them scribbling on graph paper about permutations and factorials and whatever else the problems asked them to use. Once they agreed to disagree, they worked for about an hour in almost uninterrupted silence, moving from their math assignment to physics to other classes that they weren’t taking together. Even though he didn’t need to look at Keith’s textbook anymore, Lance was still sitting with him at his desk. It was comfortable.

Keith was running out of homework to do besides his French, but Lance had said that he wanted to wait before they started working on that, so he pulled out his music notebook. It wasn’t a regular notebook with lined paper, rather, it was lined with staff for compositions. It was almost the end of the trimester, so it was pretty full from his composition homework so far. He got out a pencil and started writing out harmonies to a choral arrangement he had been writing to the text of “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas. It had been one of his favorite poems as an angsty middle schooler.

“Whoa,” said Lance, “you write music by hand?”

“What do you mean?” asked Keith.

“My sister took IB music composition as well when she was in high school, but she always used software to write her music. I didn't even know they made notebooks for that.”

“Do you think Bach and Haydn had software?” Keith retorted.

“Do you think you're as good as Bach and Haydn?”

 _Damn, he's good with thinking on the spot_ , Keith thought to himself. “I suppose not,” he replied.

“Alright, I'll let you get back to work then,” Lance said fondly.

Finally, after Lance complained about being bored of his English homework, they decided to move on to French.

“I'm gonna try to study on my own, but if I need your help, I'll ask you, okay?” Lance proposed.

“Sounds good to me,” replied Keith.

After a long pause, Lance piped up, “I think this sentence in my textbook is the longest sentence I have ever read.”

“Oh yeah?” asked Keith, pulling a small book out of his bag.

“La Princesse de Clèves,” Lance said carefully, reading its title from the cover.

Keith began reading from the page he had bookmarked, “Ce comte la trouva instruite des intérêts de la cour de France et du mérite de ceux qui la composaient, mais surtout il la trouva si remplie de la réputation du duc de Nemours, elle lui parla tant de fois de ce prince, et avec tant d'empressement que, quand M. de Randan fut revenu, et qu'il rendit compte au roi de son voyage, il lui dit qu'il n'y avait rien que M. de Nemours ne pût prétendre auprès de cette princesse, et qu'il ne doutait point qu'elle ne fût capable de l'épouser. ”

“Wow,” Lance said, “I didn’t understand any of that.”

“Yeah, neither do I,” replied Keith, “that’s my point. Sentences in French are just long and that’s the way they are. In English, they condemn the run-on sentence and in French they applaud it. It sure as hell gets confusing though.”

“What’s the book about?” Lance asked.

“Uh,” Keith began with his usual eloquence, “it’s about a poor girl who marries a prince and never loves him, and she then falls in love with a duke and never touches him.”

“That’s stupid,” said Lance, “If I loved a man, I would touch him.”

“Oh,” Keith found himself replying. He couldn’t find words to articulate how he felt about what Lance had said. He didn't even know if there was a concept or a possible abstract idea that could represent what his reaction to that sentence was. Eventually, he decided that it didn't really mean that much and it had just caught him off guard. 

Sensing the tenseness from Keith's end of the conversation, Lance decided to lighten it up. “Not that I love anybody right now,” he clarified, “I am footloose and fancy free, as Judy Moody would put it. Or was it Junie B. Jones?”

“Who are these people?” asked Keith.

“You don't know them? They're from these books I used to read as a kid. They were both really long series and the main characters have similar names so I get them mixed up a lot.”

“Never heard of them.”

“They were more meant for girls, I think. But I never let that stop me from enjoying something.”

Keith appreciated Lance’s ability to always keep a conversation flowing. Sure, he babbled, but more like in the sense of a brook than a ramble. His words were nourishing, refreshing, almost wholesome. “I guess I never came across them. Although if I did, I wouldn't have let gender roles stop me from enjoying something either, I suppose.”

“So what series did you read as a kid, then?”

“Oh, _How To Train Your Dragon_. Absolutely. I comprised the entire fanbase for that series as a child.”

“I think _How To Train Your Dragon_ is pretty popular, though.”

“Oh, no, I know, but I think that all happened when the movie came out. But I started reading the books in like second grade and I still own all of them. In third grade I even wrote to Warner Brothers and asked them to make a movie out of it.”

“You know Dreamworks made the movie, right?” Lance corrected.

“Again, you're right. But when I was eight I wasn't smart enough to write an animation studio to ask for a movie that would probably be animated. Anyway, the movie came out two years after I wrote that letter and completely disappointed me.”

“Seriously? I thought it was pretty good. I was pretty into it for a bit in fourth grade.”

“Yeah,” Keith replied, “it was good, but it wasn't _How To Train Your Dragon_. They changed basically everything except for a couple characters’ names. I would go into it except it would probably take a couple hours to explain.”

Hearing Keith speak so much warmed Lance’s heart because usually he was a bit distant and broody. Lance didn't care if it was about some dorky book series, Keith’s face was lighting up and the thing Lance loved with his entire existence was making people happy, so he replied, “well, we have a whole night for you to explain it.”

And Keith did just that. The boys fell asleep at almost 2 AM, with all their homework done except their French.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is like 500-700 words shorter than the others & i am s o r r y
> 
> i do plan to crank out one or more over the next week tho, and i apologize again for the spotty update schedule :/


End file.
